Surprise! ‘Riddick’ not so bad after all

“Riddick,” the only major new movie opening today, wasn’t screened for critics in most markets until Wednesday night. The only reason to do that is to limit opening-day reviews, which the studio expects to be less than glowing (Thursday-night screenings are another matter; that’s an attempt to eliminate them entirely).

That explains why there’s no review in print this morning, although there is a review on mySA.com.

The question is: What was the studio afraid of?

The critics don’t love “Riddick,” but they sure don’t hate it, either. It has a 57 Tomatometer score — 50 among the so-called Top Critics. That’s a tick short of Fresh territory, which requires 60 percent positive reviews, but it’s one of the year’s best scores from a critic-averse movie. Movies screened late in the week rarely manage half that. Some, like Adam Sandler’s “Grown Ups 2,” can’t get out of single digits.

Peter Hartlaub, movie critic for mySA Weekend (did you notice the name tweak in print?), embodies that 50-50 split in a single review. His 2 1/2-star review, which hasn’t been factored into the Tomatometer yet, says the movie seems cheaply made, but that it has the lean vision of the original, “Pitch Black.” And he offers grudging praise of Diesel, writing, “There’s no frontline actor in movies who puts in a more concentrated effort in the B-movie realm. Even Nicolas Cage has to bow down to Diesel…”

So it’ll be interesting to see if Rotten Tomatoes judges this review Fresh or Rotten. Considering its penchant for going thumbs-up on borderline calls, I’m guessing Fresh.

The consensus: “It may not win the franchise many new converts, but this back-to-basics outing brings ‘Riddick’ fans more of the brooding sci-fi action they’ve come to expect.”

So why in the world did the studio, Universal, work to suppress opening-day reviews? As the only new movie in multiplexes, “Riddick” practically had the weekend to itself (the encore run of “This Is the End” is the only new competitor). Sure, Universal probably figured Riddick-starved fans, who haven’t seen their hero since “The Chronicles of Riddick” in 2004, would show up anyway. But opening-day reviews might have expanded the audience, maybe even drawing some dudes away from football on TV.

And Diesel is on a roll. “Fast & Furious 6″ was consistently on the “winners” side of various summer winners and losers lists, including mine. Predicting that “Riddick would rule the weekend, BoxOffice Mojo analyst Ray Subers wrote, “After a few quiet years, Diesel’s star has gone up again recently thanks to the enormous success of the last three ‘Fast & Furious’ movies, which have combined to earn over $600 million at the domestic box office.”

So yeah, maybe “Riddick” won’t win many new converts. But keeping it under wraps as long as possible might mean not winning ANY.